Epilogue
by jinjyaa
Summary: So, do Yuuri and Wolfram ever get married? Or would Wolfram's wedding bring disaster to Shin Makoku... again?


Kyou kara Maou : Epilogue

Summary: So, do Yuuri and Wolfram _ever_ get married?

This idea started as an epilogue to The Bedding of Wolfram, though I kinda wish I'd left it standalone now. The two stories aren't closely related.

Disclaimer: standard – Kyou kara Maou is not mine.

Written after seeing episode 65 or so. Now I've seen all of them, but… didn't bother to change the slight effects of later episodes. There are no spoilers. Most events referred to here never happen in the series.

Kyou kara Maou : Epilogue

As the years had passed, the difference in appearance between Shibuya Yuuri Harajuku Fuuri, and Yuuri as Maou, had all but evaporated, save for the good-natured joyfulness forming the expression on his face. The glowing warmth and equanimity of his personality shone from his eyes and smile, even at times like this, with Wolfram verbally abusing him across the supper table.

"I demand my _wedding_," Wolfram hissed. The golden blond Mazoku looked the same as the day they'd met. Indeed, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Wolfram wasn't so much youthful, as rather short. Though slight himself, Yuuri was half a head taller than him these days.

"Good God, not a Wedding again!" Yuuri made a hex sign in Wolfram's general direction across their dinner table in Blood Pledge Castle. Greta giggled, Gwendal coughed discreetly, and Conrad looked suffused.

_"Yuuurrriii!"_ Wolfram half-rose from his chair and pounded the edge of the table. "You. Agreed. To marry. Me. _I demand a wedding,_" he hissed.

"Wolfram, be reasonable…."

"Will you wear the dress from the Second Wedding this time, dear?" Lady Cheri broke in dreamily. "I love a beautiful wedding dress."

Wolfram subsided to his seat in disgust. "It fits on Greta now. I refuse to wear a dress that looks better on my daughter."

"Can I get married in it, then, Chichiue Wolfram?"

Wolfram smiled fondly at their daughter, growing into a beautiful woman. "Anything for you, sweet. But not marriage, so soon…" He turned on Yuuri. "At this rate, our daughter _will_ get married before we do."

"Not if she has our luck with weddings. _Just kidding!_"

Cheri mused, "We should fetch Yuuri's mother Miko to help plan the event."

"Good idea, Hahaue," encouraged Gwendal. "She was quite effective against the pirates during _that_ wedding. Though she will want Wolfram in a dress," he observed in distaste.

"I'll wear formal uniform, same as Yuuri. We settled that in the third wedding."

"Mm, before the fire broke out…" Yuuri reminisced. "But maybe…if we didn't invite anyone, the kingdom would be safe from our matrimony…?" He ducked the spork Wolfram hurled at him.

"Ah! Are we planning another Wedding?" breathed Günter, drifting in late to the table. He sat down dreamily, "I do so love planning your weddings, Heika! Perhaps this time I'll wait to order the food in the final week, though. Would a light meal be alright, do you think?"

"Prudent plan," agreed Anissina. "The rat infestation from the spoiled food left during the Dai Cimaron fiasco wedding, was a great trial to the women and children of the kingdom for months, though the _men_ –"

This train of thought was cut off by baby Grendel, the heir von Walde, starting to fuss. Gwendal's furrowed brow twitched as Anissina whipped out an entire ample breast to feed the baby at the dinner table. He'd married her in haste aboard Cheri's yacht, returning from Yuuri and Wolfram's pirate-interrupted wedding, terrified that she'd take Wolfram's unmarried father instead of himself. He'd since had more than ample occasion to wish he'd left her to the elder von Bielenfeld. Though he did have fun knitting mountains of stuffed animals for Grendel, who _was_ exceptionally cute. Godfather Yuuri had supplied the name, but only confided its background to Wolfram and Conrad.

Wolfram leaned face on fist, muttering, "_Fiasco_ wedding. Everything about our marriage is a joke to all Shin Makoku – no, the _world..._"

"Aw, come on, Wolfram – not our marriage, or our relationship," soothed Yuuri. "Just – the wedding thing…" He held up his hands to ward off Wolfram's wrath. "What does it matter? We're as together as we'll ever be. We won't live any differently after the wedding than before. You share my bed. We're raising children together. What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine. I couldn't be any more married to you in truth." He thus gradually worked Wolfram around to returning his loving smile. And shattered that by adding, "It's just the actual _wedding_ that's a public menace."

"_Yuuurrriii!"_

"Actually," interjected Murata Ken helpfully, "I had Shibuya Shou run a correlation analysis for me last wedding – once the dragon insurrection settled down. The highest correlation coefficients to Maou wedding crisis severity, were proximity to April 1st, total leagues travelled by all guests, and Wolfram's wedding outfit distance from his normal clothing." He added, frowning, "Though, the y-intercept of the regression line –"

"Shut up and eat, darling," said his luxuriantly green-haired wife Giesela, by way of clarifying the math. They'd married on the same return cruise as Gwendal and Annissina. As Giesela explained it at the time, she'd spent the past week defending Ken by sword in the first and _last_ dress she would _ever_ wear, donned as a bridesmaid as a special favor to Wolfram. Therefore, Murata had to marry her _that day_, before the slashed and bloodcaked dress was cut off and tossed into the deep. Murata grinned proudly at his beautiful healer-cum-valkyrie wife and applied himself to his stew, proving yet again his intellectual superiority to Gwendal as an advisor to the Maou.

Unfortunately Yuuri was too busy chuckling at his old school pal Murata and his wife Giesela, and took his eye off his main opponent of the evening.

Wolfram rose slowly, brow twitching, and stood, arms crossed, to say, "_That's it._ I've had it with being the laughingstock of this court. Yuuri…marry me or our engagement is _over._"

A palpable silence descended on the room, even baby Grendel pausing in his pigletlike slurping. In all the weddings, over all the years, through thick and thin, despite generous abuse and disparagement flowing both ways, _never _had Wolfram admitted, public or private, the possibility of letting fiancé Yuuri off the hook.

No one else really feeling free to breathe until he did so, Yuuri broke the silence fairly quickly. "You know, Wolfram…" he said, rising from the table in characteristic decisiveness, "_You are right._ Tonight, let's get married."

"What?" Wolfram breathed, stunned.

Yuuri crossed and put an arm around Wolfram's shoulders and kissed his forehead – a habit he'd found both soothed his lover and interfered with his throwing punches. "I said, tonight, let's get married. Günter, please send a Kohi to tell Ulrike we're coming. Greta, please collect the girls from the kitchen – hell, and anybody else you happen across in the halls, but we wait for no one. Conrad, please collect Yozak and Dorcas and get our mounts to the courtyard. We leave in 15 minutes."

"What?" repeated Wolfram in shock. "But…we need to change, and…"

"Nonsense, didn't you hear Murata? For the good of the realm you have to wear this blue uniform – _Oof._"

Wolfram's arms weren't pinned enough to prevent a light hook to Yuuri's solar plexus. But it was a playful one – in truth, Wolfram hardly dared believe it. In all the weddings over the years, he'd never yet gotten this close, within a single hour of the altar. His eyes shone up at Yuuri, who grinned back looking equally starstruck.

"Say, Shibuya," said Murata, eyes on the great hall's windows, where earlier a three-quarter moon and crystalline stars had graced the winter night. Now a few snowflakes danced there. "Perhaps…morning would be better."

From long experience, Yuuri mentally upgraded this mild warning by five orders of magnitude, then smiled anyway. "Tonight's the night we wed," he reiterated, and enjoyed a hero's smile from Wolfram in reward.

It took more like a half hour, but quite soon the wedding party was assembled in the courtyard. Though not at dinner, Geigen Huber Bruscella's family was visiting and joined them, their daughter Elle happily selecting the intrepid ram T-zou for her mount. Annissina had traded baby Grendel for a large unexplained package, which Gwendal gave a wide berth. His man Yozak was the only one still wearing a dress, the women having quickly changed to riding pants. Yozak held a lantern and Wolfram's favorite horse for the groom and groom to mount together. He bowed, drawling, "Congratulations, Heika, Kyo. Better you than me."

Yuuri and Wolfram both grinned at him – nothing could have dismayed the couple's stunned rapture at that point - and Yuuri motioned the party to hit the road, up to Shinou's temple to be wed by Ulrike at the Great One's altar. "I can't believe this is finally happening," breathed Wolfram over his shoulder. Yuuri, mounted behind, hugged him tighter. "Believe it," he whispered. "Tonight we wed."

The snow was light at first. Quite pretty, really.

By a third of the way up the mountain, the snow was already three inches deep and the wind was rising, blowing directly into their faces.

Conrad pulled his horse abreast of Yuuri and Wolfram, and said, "Heika, perhaps we should turn back. The snow isn't so deep yet, but at the rate it's falling…" And indeed, six inches an hour was a heavy blizzard by any standard.

Before Yuuri could respond, the sheep T-zou took wing. _"Wheee!"_ cried Elle from T-zou's back.

Now as Yuuri well knew, T-zou's aeronautics were admirable, and he sympathized with Elle's choice – it did look like fun. Unfortunately, though the sheep was winter-warm and smooth gliding, it could make no headway at all against oncoming gale-force winds. T-zou was flying not-quite-backward the way they came. In fact, T-zou was being blown toward the cliffs to the left of the mountain pass.

Leaving the appeal to the pilot to Nicola and Huber - screaming at their daughter to land the sheep – Yuuri wove his hands in front of Wolfram to work water majutsu. Even averaging only half an hour a week in study, six years was a long time – Yuuri could weave fairly good spells without _'turning Maou'_ these days.

An arm of snow rose and rose, and disappeared into the swirling blizzard toward the cliffs. Gradually a large shape snaked back – a giant catcher's mitt of snow with a sheep and whooping 6-year old safely in the palm. Yuuri dumped child and T-zou and a fair bit of snow onto Huber, and released the snow-catcher into the wind.

"Beautiful, Yuuri," Wolfram yelled in admiration. Though they were inches apart, the wind was making it hard to hear as well as see.

Yuuri squeezed him back, grinning. "I think our last wedding is shaping up to be our most fun," he yelled in reply.

Wolfram nodded emphatically, and gestured with their lantern for everyone to move on again.

And the snow was four inches deep.

By two thirds of the way up the mountain, the snow was eight inches deep, probably, but the wind drifts, with artfully corniced shifting tops, were often two feet deep. More problematic, the pass opened out of the trees and onto a broad meadow. Rolling and gentle as this meadow appeared from the safety of the path in spring, it was in reality quite broken land. And under the snow, under near-whiteout conditions, where that path might be was a mystery. In the lead with Yozak, Dorcas' horse was the first to fall.

While the other men hauled poor Dorcas and his horse out of a snowdrifted gully, Annissina approached the bridal couple. "Heika, in this situation, the only solution is my latest invention, Homing-Inu-Bobsled-kun!" To Yuuri's lovestruck delight and Wolfram's more pragmatic trepidation, Anissina pulled a cord on her strange package, which autoinflated to a fifteen foot long canoe-like toboggan. "Bobsled-kun glides almost effortlessly uphill on snow, homing in on a programmed destination," she twiddled a dial. "Using Bobsled-kun in the lead, with the animals tethered behind, it no longer matters that we can't see the trail. Bobsled-kun is of course majutsu-powered – a single majutsu user of Wolfram's power could get us all safely to Shinou's tomb."

"Unh-uh," opined Wolfram. "It's my wedding. Make Gwendal do it."

In the end, both Gwendal and Günter sat at the front to power Bobsled-kun. Most of the wedding party sat inside the sled, but Yuuri and Wolfram chose to stay mounted together behind, heading the train of mounts and sheep, with Conrad and Yozak bringing up the rear of the train.

By the time all this reorganizing was done, the snow was 10 inches deep. But things seemed to be going smoothly. The bobsled ride up the mountain was fun for all the guests, and they were making as good headway as the horses could manage. Everyone assumed that Bobsled-kun was successfully tracking the path. Through the thinner strands of snowsquall, they could occassionally glimpse Shinou's tomb looming closer.

"You're right, Yuuri, this is our most fun wedding yet!" cried Wolfram over the howl of the wind.

Just then, a particularly strong wayward windsquall snuck up behind T-zou and sent him aloft, screeching in indignation. T-zou wasn't accustomed to being tethered, and the backing wind lassoed one front to the opposite rear leg, effectively robbing him of all steering control. Wolfram and Yuuri, the closest to the beleaguered sheep, didn't have time to see all this before an extremely heavy squirming woolly snowball slammed into them from behind. The force of the snowball made their horse stumble, sending Wolfram somersaulting into the sled. To evade the flying groom, half of the sled passengers bailed out the sides into snowdrifts. Meanwhile Yuuri, trying to quickly disengage T-zou before the horses foundered, cut the animal train rope. Suddenly lightened, completely unbalanced, and loosed from its rear drag, Bobsled-kun flipped up on its Mazoku-heavy nose and catapulted the remaining passengers into the snow.

And from the direction of the cliffs to the left, Cheri and Giesela started to scream.

While Conrad and Yozak leapt to disentangle the horses, while Wolfram gasped to get his wind back, while Gwendal clawed his way out of a snowbank, Yuuri started to glow. From all the snowsqualls backing and filling, a snow funnel grew lifting up the wedding party, horses, sheep, bobsled, Cheri, Giesela and all, lifting them high into the air, then depositing them all safe in the courtyard of Shinou's tomb. Artfully carved snowdrifts still lay all about, but the sky was clear, and the beautiful crisp winter stars and moon shone down, sprinkling the the snow with glinting diamonds.

"Wolfram," the Maou called sternly. Wolfram paused brushing snow from his clothes and gazed at the Maou morosely. "Your selfishness this night risked the lives of all the people you hold most dear." Wolfram's eyes narrowed. "Yet these friends and family, and above all, he who loves you most, were willing to go through all of this to show their love for you. You have much to be worthy of."

"Yeah, right," said Wolfram. "Now give me back my husband." With which, Yuuri stopped glowing, and his hair and he sunk slowly to the snow.

Günter helped Wolfram drag the unconscious Yuuri into the Great Hall. The others followed as soon as animal chores and snow-sloughing permitted. Ulrike waited at the altar, smiling. As usual with a Mazoku wedding ceremony, men drifted to one side and women to the other. Though Yozak, as the only one present besides Ulrike wearing a dress, opted to side with the women. As was only natural for the longest standing relationship present, Yozak and Conrad were thus on opposite sides of the room. Cheri, dressed for the elements in her red leather catsuit, teased Yozak with the tip of her whip, whispering she had just one son left to marry off. Conrad, with an easy trust grown of 75 years of love and war, was confident Yozak could laugh that off.

With all eyes trained on groom and groom, Murata wandered almost unnoticed to the fountain wall behind the altar, which was burbling and chortling gleefully. "Enough, you incorrigible brat!" he hissed quietly. "I've told you, this Maou doesn't take orders, and he's decided. It's not von Bielenfeld's fault he looks just like you. You've teased him enough already!"

Wolfram von Bielenfeld, unaware of this byplay, stood alone in the center, staring down at Yuuri, both gently steaming from wet clothes, mortified.

And they waited.

Eventually Yozak drawled, "von Bielenfeld-kyo, if you want I could poke him with a stick for you."

"No. Thank you. Yozak." He paused another long moment, then cried out in anguish, "_Six years_, from the day I met you, from the day you proposed to me, our engagement has been a _COMPLETE FARCE!"_ And he hauled off and kicked Yuuri in the side.

Conrad and Günter jerked forward to their lord's defense, but were restrained by Gwendal. The gentler sex of the court there assembled, plus Yozak, unanimously nodded their heads. _A perfectly justified kick._

As Yuuri groaned and started coming to, Wolfram immediately knelt to hold and gently bring him around. "Are you all right, Yuuri?" he whispered. "Are you…still willing to go through with this?"

Yuuri, rubbing his bruised side, whispered back, "Definitely. Tonight's the night."

Wolfram closed his eyes, and an errant tear squeezed out. "It would be safer for Shin Makoku to get this over with, after all," he whispered bitterly.

"No. Because I really do love you." Wolfram glared at him sideways, wanting to be convinced. Yuuri continued, in a whisper only Wolfram could hear, "When I met you, I was just a kid. I've grown up since then. I'm ready now. Let's get married."

And they did wed. And after their vows, Yuuri did kiss Wolfram in front of everyone, a long and deep and well-practiced kiss at that, after all those years. Once Yuuri decided something, he decided with his whole heart and will. And for Wolfram…his heart was decided six years before and never once wavered.

The party afterwards was a swirling rosy haze to Wolfram, floating in a sea of hot mulled wine brought in by the shrine maidens. He kissed and hugged all the wedding guests, and danced with Yuuri and Cheri and Conrad and Yuuri and Anissina and Yuuri and Greta and Yuuri, and smiled until his cheeks ached and kept on smiling.

As the guests began to drift off to the dormitory the shrine maidens had doubled up to free for them, Yuuri pulled Wolfram to the Maou's room, always reserved for him at the Tomb. He shut the door on everyone and drew Wolfram into a full-body hug, and whispered in his ear. "Are you satisfied now, Wolfram? Being husbands? I love you. I really want you to be happy."

"Yes, I'm deliriously happy. I love you, wimp. And I'll never ask you for anything again."

"Unh-uh," Yuuri contradicted, holding Wolfram at arm's length a moment to look him in the eye. "Keep asking. If you stop asking me for things, I'll think you don't need me anymore."

Wolfram flashed a bishounen smile that took Yuuri's breath away. "Deal!"

And they bickered and laughed and loved each other happily ever after.

-oOo-

Author's note:

There are further stories in this story arc. Please click on author's profile, homepage link, to reach the illustrations & summaries website. (Those summaries contain spoilers.)

The illustration for _Epilogue_ is called _A Fully Justified Kick_. Heheh.

-oOo-

Please review.


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